8 months!

Yikes! My baby girl is already eight months old! I think I say this every month but I love this age. I want her to stop growing. Well I guess she has - she is staying absolutely tiny. Our highly scientific weigh in on our bathroom scale put her at 15 pounds even. She is so bitty. Danny stayed little when he was a baby so I'm not worried. She's happy and active and healthy so I'm happy. Plus it's way easier to carry a little baby around than a big one, right?

Her little personality at this age cracks me up. I wish I could capture every single facial expression and movement in a picture. I seriously need to have a video camera on her all day. I find myself laughing out loud at her all the time.

This month especially she has learned so much. She plays peek a boo which is the cutest thing in the world. She pulls the blanket over her face then waits and surprises us by pulling it off. She gets the most pleased look on her face for being able to trick us like that. The best is when she only gets her eyes covered so we can see her little closed smile waiting to shock us. I never knew I could love peek a boo so much. Her other new tricks are waving and getting so close to crawling.


Just checking to make sure I had her stats right.

I wish I could capture how truly amazing this girl's eyelashes are.  That is the number one comment I get from people when they see her. The best was from a guy who said "wow, my wife pays a lot of money to have eyelashes like those."

Ella loves to watch the fountains at Gateway. We went with some friends to dinner and then much to their delight to sit on the steps and watch the water.

On the first (and pretty much last) warm day we had this year Ella came out and enjoyed some time sitting in the sun while I weeded the flower beds. I love the smell of sunscreen on sweet baby skin. It made me really excited for more sun and time outside this summer.

It was the cutest thing when I'd look over and she'd be laying down kicking her legs looking at the grass or just talking to herself. She has always loved being outside so I'm sure she was in heaven.

She is getting SO close to crawling. She gets up on her hands and knees, rocks and then sort of dive bombs forward. Time to start baby proofing! (I've already eliminated the computer cords you can see in the picture.)

Each month our house gets more and more devoted to all things baby. Her new thing is to have a bunch of toys spread out all over the floor and then she just scoots to them and plays with one thing for awhile and then moves on to the next. I love watching her little mind work as she moves to each new thing and figures things out.

Another one of her new things is waving. It's the cutest thing ever. She waves "hi" and "bye" with her whole arm and if you're lucky, both arms. Here she is mid-wave.

But all of the waving and playing can get exhausting so it's important to take little rests in between.

Like I said earlier, she loves being outside. Everyday when Danny gets home from work he takes her on a walk through the yard to look at the blossoms. She loves pinching them and examining them. Here they are checking out the peach tree.

Another big and exciting first this month was that she now sits in the front of the shopping cart with no car seat! I love it! It's so much easier to shop now. I couldn't ever really see over the car seat and it was such a pain to take in and out. Ella likes it much better too. She loves going to the store. She smiles and interacts with everyone and she eats up the attention.

Here she is sitting up the first time. She's a little stunned because her brilliant mom chose to take a picture in the TV section at Costco. No distractions there.

And this last shot is courtesy of Danny. Ever since she was tiny, he would put her in his sock drawer while he changed his clothes after work. She getting a little too big to do that anymore so he took a picture to remember his little sock drawer buddy.

This post is already pretty lengthy so just a few more little things I want to remember about little Ella Lu:

• She's always liked to do things her own way. (i.e. no bottle or binky) so I should have figured eating would be no different. She never really took to the pureed baby foods. She was okay with sweet potatoes and apples but that's pretty much it. We have found, however, that she loves regular food. She eats cottage cheese, greek yogurt, string cheese, whole wheat toast, steamed veggies, diced peaches, graham crackers and bits of whatever we're eating for dinner. She also LOVES asparagus. She takes the whole spear in her hand and sucks out the middle part.
• When she is finished eating or is not interested in what you are offering her, she squints her eyes shut, scrunches up her nose and turns away. I guess she figures if she can't see it she doesn't have to eat it.
• She loves to tease and play games. The other night at a ward activity she was patting the guy sitting next to us on the shoulder and when he'd look over she'd bury her head in my chest or look up at the ceiling. Then when he'd look away she'd do it again. I was absolutely dieing. It was the cutest thing.
• She loves to "sing" - which is sometimes a high pitched squeal and sometimes more of a monotone yell. She especially loves to do it with a giant smile on her face while we're walking through the grocery store. 

Have I mentioned how much I love being Ella's mom. She is such a breath of fresh air and a joy to have in our home. Her giggle is contagious and her sweet personality makes me want to be a better person. We love her and are so excited to watch her continue to grow.